Ghostuck
by Widowing Powder
Summary: Everyone says you're already sick.  And you aren't, not really, but they say you are and they're doctors, so everyone else thinks they're right.    Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you can see ghosts.
1. Desolation Row

May thirteenth, Friday.

The black and white image of a young man stares up from a drab newspaper, the very front page. He looks tired, and though he's smiling it doesn't quite reach his eyes. Dressed to the nines in what you can only presume is top quality clothing (because never in your life have you seen someone who looks quite so much like an advertisement for men's clothing from the nineteen twenties), his bony fingers (and gog, they're white, even from the murky not-quite-grey of the newspaper's background) settled on the shoulder of a young lady. She's beaming, of course, it doesn't look like she does anything but smile, wearing something airy and feminine and so gauzy you're not quite sure it can be human made. They're so different, and yet their faces bear similarities- the high cheekbones, the thick upper lips, the lithe bodies and bony fingers.

Bold and authoritative, the black headline booms:

**TRAGIC SUICIDE OF THE AMPORA FAMILY HEIR**

_Last Tuesday, the body of Eridan Ampora (age nineteen, pictured at the left with his cousin, Feferi Peixes, heiress to the Peixes gem mines) was discovered in the Ampora's beach side home. The boy, presumed to be missing earlier this month, was discovered by his cousin, who had been searching almost ceaselessly for him since his mysterious disappearance. He was found hanging from his own belt by his neck, clothes caked with salt and seaweed. Authorities say that it was likely Ampora attempted to drown himself and, upon failing, resorted to self inflicted hanging._

_His cousin Feferi maintains otherwise._

_'You all don't know Eridan.' She was quoted as saying, when questioned as to why she wished to pursue a full investigation into his death. 'He wasn't that type of guy. He was emotional, but he was...He was sweet. Considerate. He would never have tried to hurt anyone like this. Never.'_

_When pressed on rumors of a torrid romance between herself and her cousin, Peixes refused to comment. Speculation as to whether Ampora's apparent suicide was a desperate attempt to cover up the affair is hot, especially with the Peixes immediate announcement that their daughter is to be engaged to the son of self built technology tycoon, Duo Captor, Sollux Captor. Plans for the wedding-_

And that is when you tear your eyes away, having to put the paper facing down on the seat next to you with a groan. You feel sick to your stomach and you can't believe they're sending you to the place where this came from. Your father had given it to you without much thought, you suppose to keep you from talking to him. You two never were much for emotions or soft voices, and every time he looks at you now he looks scared- scared and worried and too many things that chalk up to disappointment in your book. It's why you're sitting in the back of the car as he drives you to your new home. Your home away from everything familiar.

He doesn't want to look at you as he takes you away and you understand. You don't want him to look at you, either.

You don't want to go to this new town, this Prospit Springs, either. But you can't have your way with most anything, so you take your pyriphic victory and sit in the back seat, quietly watching the scenery pass you by in a blur as your hand rubs your stomach, trying to calm the body it's attached to. It won't do to be sick when you meet your Uncle Jack, after all.

Even though everyone says you're already sick, anyways.

And you aren't, not really, but they say you are and they're doctors, so everyone else thinks they're right.

You try not to get angry remembering how they told you that. How they called you sick and dangerous and how they called all your friends hallucinations, figments of your broken and twisted mind. But you know the truth. You know it then and you knew it now, and that's the only thing that's keeping you from going really insane at all the shit that those pricks caused for you.

You know that your friends were real. Are real.

Fuck, you don't even know anymore.

The memories, the nostalgia- it overtakes you as you surrender to the hollow bitterness that's been your state of existence for so many months now. You know that soon- though not how soon- all of it will bubble up. That when you allow yourself to scream and cry, you'll scream so loud you won't make any noise but your lungs will burst, you'll cry so hard that blood will come out and then bile, bile because you're so bitter and sick of it all.

But for right now, it's just hollowness, and you're strangely okay with that. A lot like Rose told you you'd be. Rose, who they called crazy too, who they locked up in that expensive mental institution since she was little because she was like you. She knew about them, saw them. She knew all your closest friends when they followed you and the doctors just tried to tear you away from her, calling it a shared hallucination. Before you left to go away, she told you you'd be hollow. She told you a lot of things. About how you'd feel so full that you felt nothing at all, about how food wasn't going to taste the same. About how you were going to go insane if you stayed that way, so it was a good thing that you were given to screaming and thrashing and fighting against everything forever. How it was good that you wanted everything and had nothing at all, how that made you more powerful than doctor's words or the looks your parents gave you.

She told you you would make it, and that after the emotional tsunami, the tides inside you would settle for a while. She told you you could make it. You believed her, and you still do. You will always believe her because she is Rose and she promises that the place you're going to now can't be all bad. Her girlfriend, Kanaya, lives in Prospit Springs and she's just as smart as Rose herself. She understands and she doesn't think Rose is crazy. She won't think you're crazy, either, and she'll be your rock, she'll be your rock even when you're a tidal wave and you crash down against everything in your past.

She can see them, too.

So you don't panic right now, with your dad in the front seat trying desperately to drown out his awareness of your body in the back seat with country music and strict attention to the road. He tries to sing along, too, but he hates country music and doesn't know most of the words, so it mostly just comes in a soft, mumbling hum that he used to use when you were little and wanted lullabies. He didn't know any lullabies any more than he now knows country songs, so the sound is soft and familiar, and that with the promise of someone like Rose where you're going lets you be sedated enough to slip under. To slip under and back, watching the countryside pass you by.

You can't help but remember the city. Not out here, where there's nothing but trees and fields of corn and rolling skies forever. Not out here where it's so quiet, even with the radio on and your dad trying to ignore you. You can tell it's quiet just by looking out your window, and you can't help but hope it won't be like that where you're going.

The sound of police sirens and blaring car horns and too loud music from the duo of brothers that lived in the apartment right next to yours were your lullabies when you got too old to ask your dad for lullabies anymore. When your friends weren't around, those noises rocked you like a mother's arms, telling you the world went on. Telling you when your friends couldn't that the world went on, with all those wonderful sounds, even when the dead were in the ground and the dying left the earth.

It was why you spent so much time over at the Strider place next door, even when there were creepy porn puppets and condoms and half eaten cups of ramen and spilled soda pop everywhere. It was why you wore headphones every day since you were old enough to buy a pair with your allowance, why you still wear them every day, even if you're busy listening to the last sounds that you'll probably hear from your old man in a long, long time. It was why they had to give you your MP3 player back when you were in the nut house, when not even Rose could calm you down from all of the things that they were saying were wrong with you.

But here, it's quiet.

It's quiet and almost frightening, and you regret not asking Rose more about Prospit Springs. You regret a lot of things. You regret not telling the Stryders where you were going or how long it would be until you could talk to Dave's pompous ass again. You regret not somehow sneaking Rose out. You regret that your dad is in the front seat right now and you're never going to say anything to him, even if all the words buzz behind your teeth.

There's so much you need to say.

But right now, that hollow bitterness settles into your chest, and even though none of your friends is with you so that you can ask to compare this feeling with the one they've described so many times before, you know now what they were on about so much of the time. Why they could never say all they wanted to, even when you were one of the only people who could see them, talk to them.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you can see ghosts.

May 14th, Saturday

You spent last night in a tiny hotel, just one hundred miles out of Prospit Springs. It was a long drive and night time, and your father mumbled something about them not expecting you until today. You two slept in separate rooms, but it was alright because you made a new friend already, one with long hair and a nice smile. She was okay with you sleeping in her room, and apparently the resident spirit. She didn't know if she was or not when you asked her because she said she was new, and she must be a new ghost, too, because she still hasn't learned how to make new clothes for herself. Instead, she floats around your room now as you shower and dress (because frankly, you've had too many friends like this to feel nervous about this sort of thing any more, or even particularly body shy around normal, living people), her skirt in tatters and her shoes scuffed up. She's figured out how to fix up her worst cuts, though, and she tells you that that's fortunate, because she didn't have a face when she first woke up and that was one of the only things she wasn't okay with.

You ask her then if she knows yet. About the dreams after death. She tells you no, she hasn't gotten that far, and everything is still black. You tell her that's alright, she'll figure it out. She smiles, and it's beautiful, her full lips leading into dimples in ample cheeks. She tells you her name is Aradia and you can come and visit any time you want. She'll make sure you get a room somehow.

When you leave the room you're smiling, but that smile dies quickly when your father appears. He's looking at you, worried again.

'Who were you talking to?'

You don't have to think twice on it.

'Myself.'

He makes a little 'oh' noise, clearing his throat. You don't tell him about your friends anymore, because he doesn't want to hear it. He thinks that the doctors are right, but that's okay. You tell yourself it's okay, because he's your father and, deep down, you think he's trying to do his best. Right now it's okay. Everything is okay, even if you don't know how much longer it will be.

You go downstairs and are greeted with the smell of the complimentary breakfast the hotel advertises outside in broken neon lights. There are bagels and you grab one, smart enough to know that you can't stomach anything else at this point. Besides, your Uncle will have food, and your father is busy staring at you in between bites of his eggs, looking away hurriedly when you look up. You shrug it off and continue to eat, knowing that you're drawing looks.

It isn't really normal for a parent to be sitting away from their table as far as humanly possible, looking at their kid like they might lash out and bite into their femoral artery at any given moment. It's even less normal that you're acting like it is, and you can tell that the hotel residents are trying to create a story. There's a psychological name for that, you know, it's a kind of therapy that dissects how your mind works. That thought brings back memories of that place where they locked up Rose, and you frown while you chew.

It doesn't help lift the mood in the room at all.

Your father excuses himself to go pay for your rooms, even though you both know it's a lie. He's going to smoke a whole pack in the parking lot, trying to calm his nerves about visiting your uncle Jack. About this whole thing. You take another bite of bagel, and wonder how long your mental narrative is going to persist with no dialogue from living people.

Aradia laughs when you mutter this under your breath. It makes you smile, and you are overcome with an immense pity and affection for her. You hope she'll remember soon how she died, you tell her, because you're going to take flowers to her grave. She says she'd like that.

Another hour passes, and you climb into the back seat again, arranging your headphones so that they encase the whole of your ear and block everything else out. The engine starts and you turn to see Aradia, calling to you to remember to visit. It makes you smile in spite of yourself and your current predicament.

Your father doesn't even notice you waving.

When your car finally begins to trundle into a visible settlement, the first thing that you notice is the absence of dust. The road is paved, a patchwork of new and old tarmac, and the main road leads you and your father through a winding town of little houses. The colours are not what you're used to- all white fences, green grass, magnolia trees, and powder blue facades. All the quiet is still there, punctuated every so often by the sound of sprinkler systems running or a dog barking at you with it's tail wagging.

The car begins to slow as you near your Uncle Jack's house. While your father once muttered something about any place he inhabited being an 'unmistakable hell hole', it seems that it's harder to discern that he had once thought. So you sit there and look around, trying to familiarize yourself.

You slow to a halt and turn your head to the left, opening your door instinctively. Your father takes his time getting out, and only awkwardly tells you to get your things. Seeing as all your worldly possessions fit into one suitcase, it doesn't take very long.

The house that you walk up to isn't far from the street, but it's too far gone from reality. You didn't think houses like this really existed. Houses are supposed to be like the ones before: uniform, boring. The one that you're standing in front of is black, punctuated only by a red door. The yard in front of it is overgrown with tangles of blackberry thickets, and the lot takes up for one house what four of any of the other houses wouldn't have.

Your father stands there, dumbfounded, and that means that you are the first one to knock on the door. It happens via a brass knocker, shaped like a spade, which clangs and thuds loudly enough to echo throughout the street. You step back and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Your brow furrows and you knock again, feeling frustration rise in your chest like a bubble. You knock again, and then your father does, and he almost looks at you in confusion, but catches himself. You glare at the door, then turn and direct your anger at the dirty concrete in front of your feet. The sun beats down on the back of your neck and you are frustrated and angry and very confused. So angry and frustrated and confused that it takes you a matter of minutes to realize that someone is trying to talk to you.

'HEY.'

You jump, bristling. You don't like surprises.

The boy addressing you falls back, raising his hands in a non threatening manner. His hair is black and messy (it looks good on him, and that makes you frown. All your hair does is refuse to cooperate with any man made instrument on the face of the Earth) and his smile is far too wide, blue eyes crinkling up behind his glasses. He is laughing and that makes your frown crease further, that sort of peace and okay-ness melting away with every second he doesn't explain himself.

'Sorry, bro! I didn't mean to scare you.' He says, and stretches out his hand. It's the same too-white that Strider's and Lalonde's were. When you take it, it makes your hand (your nubby fingered, scarred up hand) look even darker. You don't think it's long before your frown consumes your face.

'I'm John! I live right across the street, and my dad and I thought that maybe you could use some help?'

'I could always use help. That's what I'm here for, anyways.'

Your comment sends a perplexed look to his face and he falters. Behind you, your father bristles, and you can't stop the smirk that crosses your features, even as he half-shoves you out of the way to talk to John.

'My son has a, ah, odd sense of humor-' Your father begins, and you can see John get almost a little nervous, looking back at you like you might turn werewolf and try to feast on the two of them.

'-We were looking for my brother, he lives here. Jack Noir. Do you, ah...Know him?'

It takes John a few seconds.

'You mean Mr. Slick?'

Your father pales, and that makes you mirror John's perplexed visage as you look at the back of his head. Slowly, your father nods, and John brightens up, his buck-toothed, mega-watt smile almost obscenely happy. You think there should be a law against smiles that could blind someone. Especially when they are your new neighbor.

'Mr. Slick went into town with some of his friends. But you could stay over at our house and wait, if you want! My dad just baked a cake, and I'd sure appreciate if he had someone other than me to taste test for it!'

Is this kid for real? You almost want to puke.

Almost.

But then he takes your hand and you're sure you really ARE going to puke, because you're really not used to any contact that isn't purely medically required or else ironic gestures from Dave's older brother. You squirm but he doesn't let go, and you lag in realization that he is actually a lot stronger than you.

'Oh, I really have to be going as soon as I can-'

'But what about-?'

John looks at you and you frown at him, thick eyebrows furrowed.

'Karkat.'

'Right! What about Karkat?'

Your father doesn't look at you, but opens his mouth to say something. You look at him, then John, and you sigh, the fight and disappointment draining from you. You're going to end up in this idiot's house with cake being shoved down your throat no matter what, and you'd really rather not do it while your socially inept father tried to explain that you are crazy.

'I'll stay with you until he shows up.' You tell John, voice gritty and worn out. 'My dad has to get back to the city. He has work tomorrow morning.'

The two of them are silent for a little while, before John half-shouts 'OKAY!' in excitement.

'Where are your bags?' He asks, and you almost cringe.

'I have mine.'

You hold up the suitcase that you're holding. It's got all your clothes in it, CD's of Dave and his Bro's mixes. A few poems that Lalonde wrote for you. You had a computer, but you haven't really used it since you ended up in the hospital in the first place, so it wasn't something you saw fit to carry. Besides, Lalonde and Dave wrote you letters (Lalonde because she was always infuriatingly polite; Dave because he couldn't pass up a chance at the sort of ironic forties romance that it echoed) anyway, so the point was mostly moot.

But despite what an idiot he seems to be, John catches on pretty quickly to the fact that you're completely serious. His grip on your wrist tightens when he looks back at your father, and he tugs you off to his house. He says good bye to your father, and you don't.

You don't say a lot of things. Goodbye is one of them. Goodbye is one of them because you have already said it. You said it when he put you in that hospital, when he put you there and didn't bother to say anything back.

You think maybe you should say goodbye, but as John puts his hand on the too-normal knob of his too-normal house, you hear your father's car start up. He's not looking at you when you look over his shoulder, and you watch the bright red of his tail lights disappear around the bend up the road.

When John leads you into his house, you are not smelling the inviting scent of cinnamon and cloves waft towards you from the kitchen. You are not hearing his father ask you what your name is. You are not seeing John and his Dad looking at you with a sort of concern that is loving and understanding and a million other things that it should not be because they have only just met you.

You are crying. You are crying and you cannot see because your eyes are filled with tears. You cannot smell because your nose is filled with an embarrassing amount of snot. You can hardly hear because your blood is pounding in your ears. Your temples pound in tandem, and this is not right. Nothing is okay right now like it has been since you got checked out, because you are all alone.

You are alone in a neighborhood you have never been to before. You are left under the care of this boy John and his Dad, the latter of whom has bent down and is patting you on the back, being the father your father wasn't ever really prepared to be. It makes you cry harder, and you'd be embarrassed if it weren't for everything else you are feeling. You are just Karkat now, because all of the Vantas has left you and you are going to be all alone in this new place where nothing is familiar and everything is new and strange and too much.

You are Karkat, and you are clinging to John's dad, crying. You hardly hear what he is whispering to you, but when you do it takes all of your strength not to try to burrow into his side like a newborn puppy, trying to protect itself with the warmth of it's parent.

'It's going to be alright, Karkat,' He whispers, and it's too soothing and too familiar and you wonder how fucked up John has to be if his Dad is this used to comforting someone in the middle of an emotional breakdown. Your fingers ball into his shirt and he pats your back, and you feel the fatigue begin to replace all of the panic like it's on an IV drip of emotion. Your eyes become heavy and you're soon resting against his Dad, tired and embarrassed and hollow again.

'It's okay, Karkat,' He croons gently, and you don't even think it's too awkward when he picks you up.

'It's going to be alright.'

A/N:

So, yeah!  
>To clarify, Karkat doesn't spend all his time hung up over his dad not loving him in this story.<p>

Also, as far as pairings are concerned, there are many. While this is (or will be) Karkat/John, there is going to be Karkat/Jade at some point.  
>While I don't prefer listing pairings, I can tell you that there will at least be GamzeeTavros and past!Equius/Aradia+past!Sollux/Aradia. Other than that, I prefer to leave it up to guessing.

I have senior year classes to attend to at my college, so writings will probably come a bit slowly. I'll almost always write three parts to an update.

Other than that, please let me know if you enjoy it or any suggestions you might have. c:


	2. A quick message!

(( Quick disclaimer:

Probably pissing a lot of people off by the fact that this will tell you this story has updated and there isn't a new chapter. The truth of the matter is, I had forgotten I put this story up on FF and, therefore, had an audience that sort of expected to see something more. Between filling on livejournal and working on my final classes for college, it completely slipped my mind.

Thank you for all your lovely comments, and I can promise you that this will update. If it doesn't update soon enough for your liking, you can yell at me over at .com.

At that time, I will replace this with a new chapter. Again, thank you so much for your patience and your graciousness. )


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